Bioshock Infinite Shocked Me!

I haven't played AND BEAT a single player game in a long time, mostly because I can't get into them. I tend to play more open ended type of games or games that I can take my time with i.e. obviously Skyrim and Farcry 3 or MMO's. In this case, not only did the game come free with my purchase of an AMD 7870 but I had heard nothin' but love for it.

So I'm playing the game and the graphics look nice. The card performs awesome, not a single crash in
1680 x 1050 at Max.

What I noticed and didn't like right away is that I have no real inventory unlike Skyrim. I get over that quickly. What I also notice is that I can only have 2 types of Guns on me at any particular time. I get over that as well. I notice things, like zones and level designs, these things I have not had to deal with in the past few years. I remembered way back to the days when I played Mario World and once I passed a level I COULD NEVER GO BACK (Golem Voice).
Not that much different then "Missions" in any other FPS like Call of Duty or similar types games. Though a little different from Call of Duty types since after I killed mostly everyone in a zone I could backtrack to a certain extent to look for goodies I had missed. Also, they warn you when it won't be possible to return to a set of zones. Short story, there were no cons that made me say UNACCEPTABLE FAILURE!

What I noticed and like immediately were the powers. OH MY THE POWERS aka Vigors. They way the NPC's reacted to them, and sometimes they way the powers interacted with specific objects in the world, i.e. the oil on the ground light on fire when you molten rock that bitch up. The diversity in the FPS gameplay where you can reach higher ground positions with that fancy rail hook device is something I enjoyed. Just getting around via rail transportation felt pretty fun. Having an NPC companion ("Elizabeth") was weird for a second, that is, until she became absolutely useful. Throwing me salts and ammo at opportune times. I've never been a fan of the whole "picking up ammo as you go through levels" idea, but this game made it fun. Fuck you MASS EFFECT for inserting "Heat Cartridges" into gameplay... It made no sense! More so because the first game had a cooldown / overheating mechanism which you'll all remember. ANYWAYS!

The story was fun, if somewhat over reaching for complexity, the gameplay was fun, the graphics were very nice, the voice actors made dialog a pleasure to listen to. I could have skipped a lot of the religious speechy preachy stuff but the game and it's story made hearing it quite necessary or at the very least it helped immersion.

All in all, the game is what it is and it is pretty nice. Even with my general dislike of shooters, and of the mechanics and formula involved in such games, I found this story of Dewitt to be a Delight.

My Rating (8 - 9.5) / 10

Nvidia (EVGA GTX 660) and.... Damn!

I'm on my 5th video card for a current build I've been tinkering with for the last 8 months. The build centers around an Intel DP67BG board. I was looking for a card to perform somewhere in the neighborhood of it's ATI / AMD competitor. My understanding whas that it would have roughly compared to a 7870 or a 6950 type card, it also offered a free copy of METRO: LAST LIGHT so it was a no brainer and I bought it. A secondary reason was to try out the PhysX.

I bought the card, and as usual it arrived 2-3 days earlier than Amazon said it would. Amazon service is excellent, as UPS does not mishandle the shipments of large companies, if you are a residential customer though, you might want to pack your shipments in anti-gravity / anti-stomp material.

The card arrived, I reformatted an SSD and used a brand new Western Digital Black Hard Drive. The card failed to perform with either drive. I got laggy video playback and terrible FPS in the new Free 2 Play MMO Neverwinter. When I say Terrible FPS I mean 3-12 FPS.

I am currently in the process of returning the GTX 660 to go with what I've had more luck with, that is to say, another AMD card. Haven't decided on what to get yet but I'm learning towards that AMD 7850.

My advice when experiencing issues with any specific part is to ditch it / get the refund. I spent about 2 days trying to get this card to perform, going through multiple settings and tests. Don't waste the time, if it takes that much to get it to work it's just not worth the effort. Even if it's your main hobby, all you'll learn from it is that you need to have a printer ready to make the slip for the UPS guy when he shows up for the Amazon refund pickup.

Oblivion (2013) 7.5 / 10

I watched the new Tom Cruise Movie Oblivion and I really liked it. It was a pretty nice Sci-Fi flick with some action. Reminds me a little of Pandorum and Moon.

I'll try to put the movie in a nutshell. Tom Cruise aka Jack Harper and his female companion are the last humans left on earth. They remain there to provide maintenance and security for giant water / energy harvesters that are or seem to be necessary for human survival and the terraforming of Saturn's moon Titan.

Security from what? Aliens tried to invade in the past, they were defeated and the remnant forces seem to be perpetrating gorilla warfare on the water / energy harvesters. Just watch the damn trailer.

While not as awesome as Minority Report, it's still a pretty good movie. Unlike movies such as Host Oblivion has a more polished and adult setting, combine that with a much more science fiction type of environment and we have ourselves one of the better movies of 2013. 

Check out the trailer below

Which reminds me. I watched Jack Reacher the previous day and I enjoyed that also. If you feel like hitting back to back Tom Cruise movies then here you go.

A Few Skyrim Videos

Just putting up some Skyrim videos for your enjoyment. Feel free to fast forward the boring parts, which might end up to be the whole thing :\

In other game related news, Disney cancelled the new in production Starwars game, Star Wars 1313, so... not looking forward to that anymore I guess.

Getting Arvak And Killing Boneyard Keepers

After finishing up the little time I had to spend on Neverwinter beta weekend #3 I continued on with my journey into the Soul Cairn.

I gotta say, though Neverwinter wasn't anything like what I want or expect a D&D game to be I oddly, did not hate or dislike it. It was so simple that it was hard to easily disregard. Just like games such as Bejeweled are so simple and easy to play, Neverwinter reminded me of something so simple, it really had nothing to hate about, unless you just hate simple stuff.

Still, that's not a reason to play it but, also not a reason to not play it since it will be released as a completely free game from what I've read so far, which isn't much I should add.

I will be posting a quick review and some gameplay footage as early as possible, maybe before Sunday.

Speaking of gameplay footage, here is the latest excursion into the Soul Cairn, feel free to click around in the playlist and start from the beginning.

Skyrim: Punishing Bandits & The End of Lydia!

You know how it is, one day you're buying potions in Whiterun, the other, your slaughtering bandits in a cave.

Skyrim Adventures (Episode 6): Orc Village Pt.3

Orc Village Quest Part 3 (Final)